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  <div class="section" id="s-providing-initial-data-for-models">
<span id="providing-initial-data-for-models"></span><h1>Providing initial data for models<a class="headerlink" href="#providing-initial-data-for-models" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>It’s sometimes useful to pre-populate your database with hard-coded data when
you’re first setting up an app. You can provide initial data with fixtures or
migrations.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-providing-initial-data-with-fixtures">
<span id="s-initial-data-via-fixtures"></span><span id="providing-initial-data-with-fixtures"></span><span id="initial-data-via-fixtures"></span><h2>Providing initial data with fixtures<a class="headerlink" href="#providing-initial-data-with-fixtures" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>A fixture is a collection of data that Django knows how to import into a
database. The most straightforward way of creating a fixture if you’ve already
got some data is to use the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/django-admin.html#django-admin-dumpdata"><code class="xref std std-djadmin docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">manage.py</span> <span class="pre">dumpdata</span></code></a> command.
Or, you can write fixtures by hand; fixtures can be written as JSON, XML or YAML
(with <a class="reference external" href="https://pyyaml.org/">PyYAML</a> installed) documents. The <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/serialization.html"><span class="doc">serialization documentation</span></a> has more details about each of these supported
<a class="reference internal" href="../topics/serialization.html#serialization-formats"><span class="std std-ref">serialization formats</span></a>.</p>
<p>As an example, though, here’s what a fixture for a simple <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Person</span></code> model might
look like in JSON:</p>
<div class="highlight-js notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="p">[</span>
  <span class="p">{</span>
    <span class="s2">&quot;model&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="s2">&quot;myapp.person&quot;</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="s2">&quot;pk&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="s2">&quot;fields&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="p">{</span>
      <span class="s2">&quot;first_name&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="s2">&quot;John&quot;</span><span class="p">,</span>
      <span class="s2">&quot;last_name&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="s2">&quot;Lennon&quot;</span>
    <span class="p">}</span>
  <span class="p">},</span>
  <span class="p">{</span>
    <span class="s2">&quot;model&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="s2">&quot;myapp.person&quot;</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="s2">&quot;pk&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="s2">&quot;fields&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="p">{</span>
      <span class="s2">&quot;first_name&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="s2">&quot;Paul&quot;</span><span class="p">,</span>
      <span class="s2">&quot;last_name&quot;</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="s2">&quot;McCartney&quot;</span>
    <span class="p">}</span>
  <span class="p">}</span>
<span class="p">]</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>And here’s that same fixture as YAML:</p>
<div class="highlight-none notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>- model: myapp.person
  pk: 1
  fields:
    first_name: John
    last_name: Lennon
- model: myapp.person
  pk: 2
  fields:
    first_name: Paul
    last_name: McCartney
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>You’ll store this data in a <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">fixtures</span></code> directory inside your app.</p>
<p>Loading data is easy: just call <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/django-admin.html#django-admin-loaddata"><code class="xref std std-djadmin docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">manage.py</span> <span class="pre">loaddata</span></code></a>
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">&lt;fixturename&gt;</span></code>, where <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">&lt;fixturename&gt;</span></code> is the name of the fixture file
you’ve created. Each time you run <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/django-admin.html#django-admin-loaddata"><code class="xref std std-djadmin docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">loaddata</span></code></a>, the data will be read
from the fixture and re-loaded into the database. Note this means that if you
change one of the rows created by a fixture and then run <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/django-admin.html#django-admin-loaddata"><code class="xref std std-djadmin docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">loaddata</span></code></a>
again, you’ll wipe out any changes you’ve made.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-where-django-finds-fixture-files">
<span id="where-django-finds-fixture-files"></span><h3>Where Django finds fixture files<a class="headerlink" href="#where-django-finds-fixture-files" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>By default, Django looks in the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">fixtures</span></code> directory inside each app for
fixtures. You can set the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-FIXTURE_DIRS"><code class="xref std std-setting docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FIXTURE_DIRS</span></code></a> setting to a list of
additional directories where Django should look.</p>
<p>When running <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/django-admin.html#django-admin-loaddata"><code class="xref std std-djadmin docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">manage.py</span> <span class="pre">loaddata</span></code></a>, you can also
specify a path to a fixture file, which overrides searching the usual
directories.</p>
<div class="admonition seealso">
<p class="first admonition-title">See also</p>
<p class="last">Fixtures are also used by the <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/testing/tools.html#topics-testing-fixtures"><span class="std std-ref">testing framework</span></a> to help set up a consistent test environment.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-providing-initial-data-with-migrations">
<span id="providing-initial-data-with-migrations"></span><h2>Providing initial data with migrations<a class="headerlink" href="#providing-initial-data-with-migrations" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>If you want to automatically load initial data for an app, don’t use fixtures.
Instead, create a migration for your application with
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/migration-operations.html#django.db.migrations.operations.RunPython" title="django.db.migrations.operations.RunPython"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">RunPython</span></code></a> or
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/migration-operations.html#django.db.migrations.operations.RunSQL" title="django.db.migrations.operations.RunSQL"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">RunSQL</span></code></a> operations.</p>
</div>
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